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I am pessimistic that we will see 'affordable' reflective color screen devices any time soon (within the next year or two).
In the meantime, we will have a plethora of LCD (including hybrids like Pixel Qi) tablets and smartphones (and the Nookthing), and these will drive performance expectations and provide the main platform for 'enhanced e-books', etc. Most consumers of these devices will not be long-form readers and won't care that they have to charge it all the time, or whether it is backlit or not, as long as it meets an attractive price point. Gradual improvements in power management, display performance, economies of scale, and battery technology continue to raise the bar that reflective color displays need to surmount in order to present a viable alternative in the market.
While I'm confident that reflective color displays will eventually find their way into the market, and perhaps even dominate display technology, I expect them initially to be costly, and consequent demand to be relatively low. 6" eink devices commanded $400 price points for a couple of years before demand and technical refinements have resulted in 60-70% reduction.
By contrast, 9" eink devices, which have been available almost as long, remain costly, and things like iPad have soaked up what little demand there was for them, ensuring that economies of scale cannot be easily reached that would allow more significant price reduction. The Kindle DX and Entourage EDGE linger on, but it remains to be seen for how long.
Anyway, I hope I'm wrong - certainly the general trend in technology is to exceed expectations. But technology also involves many contingent factors, and in this case, these seem to be impeding the development of reflective color displays.
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